Featured blog entries

Health Care For America Now!

Roger Hickey — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:38:45 -0400

On Tuesday, July 8, a new campaign will be launched – for Health Care for America Now! – at press conferences in Washington and 55 other cities and towns. We at the Campaign for America’s Future are proud to play a leadership role in launching this much-needed campaign, led by 100 national and local organizations.

The steering committee includes ACORN, AFSCME, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, MoveOn, NEA, National Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood, SEIU, UFCW, and USAction – not a bad core group to make history with. And now is the time!

Profound economic changes are convincing the public that we need to take action together to build a healthy, sustainable economy and ensure real security for all families. And that includes, first and foremost, making sure everyone has quality, affordable health care.

The mission of the Campaign for America's Future is to develop and promote bold policy ideas that can build a majority for change. We brought together environmentalists and union activists to promote an "Apollo project" investment agenda to make America energy independent – and to create the next generation of good American jobs. We sounded the alarm about conservative plans to privatize Social Security, and – working with a coalition similar to HCAN – we helped to defeat those dangerous plans to undermine retirement security.

So it was only natural that over the last two years, we have been encouraging health care experts to think big, to come forward with plans to cover everyone who doesn’t have good health care coverage, while reining in spiraling costs by reorganizing the most inefficient aspects of what is today a very fragmented, wasteful and unstable health care system.

For two years, we have worked to promote discussion of the Health Care for America plan, written by Yale University health expert Jacob Hacker and published in January 2007 by the Economic Policy Institute. Praised by activists, policy experts and labor leaders, the Hacker-EPI plan helped inform the policy work and public opinion testing of many progressive organizations. And partly as a result of our discussions with the presidential candidates and their policy teams, and our pointed health care questions to them all over the blogosphere during the primary election debate, it became the template for the health care plans of candidates John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. National Public Radio reported in January 31:

All three plans (Obama’s, Clinton’s and Edwards’) came from the same source: a Yale University political science professor named Jacob Hacker. And all three were based on the concept of something called "shared responsibility," where government, individuals and employers all pay something. . . . So, Clinton and Obama would let people keep their existing coverage if they want to, or buy into a government-sponsored plan like Medicare, and the government would subsidize small businesses and the poor.

Most Americans know that we can’t depend on the health insurance industry – or the drug companies – to solve the big health care problems of spiraling costs and millions with inadequate insurance or no coverage at all. In fact, those companies and their lobbyists are a big part of the problem. Clearly, if insurance and drug companies want to be part of a national system to cover everyone, they cannot be allowed to exclude people from coverage, including people with pre-existing conditions. They will have to sell good, comprehensive insurance that we can afford, stop shifting costs to us through high deductibles and co-pays and stop employing devious tricks to deny people with coverage payment for their health care services. And, while we believe everyone should be free to keep or elect private health insurance, everyone should also have the choice to enroll in a public, Medicare-style insurance plan that guarantees affordable coverage, without a private insurer middleman.

So a big part of our contribution to HCAN will be to distribute research and analysis that makes the case not only for why we need change, but for the kind of change we need. Information is power, and we will distribute this information to the many parts of our grassroots coalition. And we will push forward health care policy experts and opinion leaders whose views on health care need to be heard, nationally and locally, in Congress, in the media, on the web and in the field.

Another project HCAN and CAF will engage the public in is a campaign that and demonstrates all the many ways that insurance and drug companies put their profits before our health care and use their political influence to undermine health care change.

Most politicians now say they favor some kind of health care “reform,” but HCAN is mobilizing a citizens’ force that can make sure we do it right, based on the principles of choice, affordability, shared responsibility, and fairness. Without the kind of public mobilization HCAN is bringing to this debate, we could end up, once again, with a system that leaves us at the mercy of predatory private insurance and drug companies.

We’re excited to continue our leadership on this critical kitchen-table issue, and confident that the new Health Care for America Now! coalition will empower the public to triumph over special interest influence and solve the growing health care crisis.

McCain's Croc of Hooey

Sara Robinson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:27:08 -0400

Marc Ambinder at theatlantic.com notes that Crocs (which are probably what your children are wearing right this minute) seem to be a perennial favorite when GOP presidential candidates come to Colorado and need to call out a Great American Company:

President Bush, on November 4, 2006:
One of the entrepreneurs with me today is Duke Hanson, the cofounder of a company called Crocs. Crocs produces a hugely popular line of lightweight shoes, and over the past three years, they've expanded dramatically. Three years ago, Crocs had just 11 employees. Today, Crocs provides jobs for hundreds of Americans, and his shoes are sold all over the world. Duke calls this, "rocket ship growth." Here's what he says: "We're bringing a lot of money in. We're employing people and providing a product that millions of people love."

Sen. John McCain, Monday:
Five years ago, the outdoor footwear company, Crocs, was started by a couple of entrepreneurs with a great idea, ingenuity and drive. This former small business now employs 600 people in Colorado alone, and sells over 50 percent of its products in 90 countries around the world. Building barriers to Crocs or any American company's access to foreign markets will have a devastating effect on our economy and jobs, and the prosperity of American families.

Once again, they either have incompetent fact-checkers, or they're lazy, or they're just plain lying.

Truth be told: Crocs weren't invented by "a couple of entreprenuers" in Colorado, let alone by Duke Hansen.They weren't even invented in America. They were invented in that Great Frozen Socialist Paradise to the north. You read that right: Ugly neon-hued foam shoes are another diabolical innovation for which we can Blame Canada.

The company that invented them was subsequently bought by Hansen and two other aforementioned Colorado entrepreneurs, who added the cute name and the marketing gloss. But the shoes are still made abroad, in the original factory in Quebec, where the employees come pre-equipped with their own health insurance. Or at least, they will be for a few more weeks: in April, the company announced that they will close down the Quebec City plant in July, sending the 670 jobs there to plants in Mexico, Brazil, and beyond.

In other words: it's another Great American Business that does most of its business elsewhere. Six hundred U.S. jobs is a fine thing—but it could be twice that many if they were actually made here, too.

It's also not a robust business, at least not at the moment. Following a solid IPO in 2006 and a strong 2007, their sales have been off dramatically this year. The company's published fundamentals look OK, but sell-through sucks, and their current stock price is down 82 percent from this time last year.

In other words: it's a Great American Business that's showing signs of getting hammered in a Republican recession.

Also, there are now at least three shareholder lawsuits in the offing. Evidently, some investors suspect that the owners knew more than they were telling when they dumped large quantities of their own stock late last year, just before it all went to hell.

In other words: It's a Great American Business that's run by Republicans, who are evidently getting everything their generous donations to the GOP paid for: presidential puffery, scrupulously indifferent SEC oversight, low taxes— and a tanking economy that's left fewer and fewer families in a position to pay $35 for a pair of kids' shoes.

To Win, Presidential Candidates Move ... Left

Bill Scher — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:09:51 -0400

The punditocracy won't tell you, but Barack Obama and John McCain are moving to the Left.

Take Iraq. Sensing that voters did not react kindly to McCain's December remarks expressing comfort with U.S. troops remaining in Iraq for 100 years, he predicted in May that if he was president, "By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom." He also changed his slogan to highlight "Peace," and released a TV ad in which he pronounced, "I hate war."

On the environment, McCain's website is covered with support for "green" energy. His campaign even attacks Obama for supporting "the energy bill promoted by President Bush and Vice President Cheney."

And on immigration, during the primary McCain said he would not vote for his own legislation providing a pathway to citizenship for those who immigrated illegally, to win votes from anti-immigrant conservatives. But now, he's embracing his pro-immigrant legislation again, calling it "my top priority yesterday, today and tomorrow."

Whereas Obama spent the first month of the general election campaign reiterating support for public investment in universal health care, renewable energy and other modernization of infrastructure, comparing his vision to major public works projects from progressive Presidents Jefferson, Lincoln and both Roosevelts.

On Iraq, Obama continues to argue for the same position he held throughout the primary: a gradual withdrawal of combat troops over 16 months and a total rejection of permanent military bases. (Attempts from conservative commentators to say he has shifted his position are false. They point to Obama foreign policy adviser's recent comment about the 16-month timetable, "That’s not a deadline. That’s a timetable." Such flexibility is not new. It was stated during the primaries on CBS' 60 Minutes, not exactly a low-profile platform. Obama was asked if he would "pull out according to that time table, regardless of the situation?" Obama responded, "No, I always reserve as commander in chief, the right to assess the situation.")

You may or may not be skeptical of the nuance. That's a matter of opinion. What's a matter of fact is Obama is running on the same position, opposing the policy of permanent occupation, as before.

Other issues where Obama is accused of moving rightward after the primaries -- such as gun rights, death penalty, faith-based initiatives, NAFTA and FISA -- he also has mainly reiterated previously held positions. With the exception of FISA, there's no movement.

He previously argued for different gun laws in different states and cities (a position Howard Dean advanced in his 2004 presidential run.) He writes in "Audacity of Hope" of support for "carefully tailored" faith-based initiatives and the death penalty for "beyond the pale" crimes including "the rape and murder of a child." His tone on NAFTA may have changed slightly, but his position of reform, not repeal, is the same.

Some of those positions wouldn't necessarily be considered liberal. But Obama never claimed to hold liberal positions on everything.

Even taking those positions into account, it's not plausible to argue Obama is trying to win by moving rightward when his campaign continues to be based on supporting a revitalized government role in creating jobs, fighting poverty, providing health coverage, generating clean energy, recruiting teachers, making college affordable and protecting retirement security -- not to mention revamping global diplomacy and rejecting permanent occupation of Iraq.

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson disingenuously argues today in the W. Post that Obama has made a "head-snapping shift to the center [because America] remains a center-right country. And so Obama has shifted, trimmed or retreated on nearly every issue that won him the nomination."

That is factually wrong in every possible way.

In the aftermath of eight years of conservative failure led by Gerson's old boss, the distance between the average "liberal" voter and "moderate" voter has shrunk, and the distance between the average "moderate" voter and "conservative" voter is a gulf.

America has proven not to be the center-right country of Karl Rove's fantasies, but a country with a Progressive Majority.

Offering a clean break from failed conservatism is what is serving Obama so well, as he leads McCain in every poll.

Obama does not have to jettison to core planks of his platform to appeal to those moderate independent voters who did not participate in the primaries.

While McCain continues to have huge difficulty crafting positions that can appeal to both moderates and conservatives, forcing him to incoherently move Left and Right simultaneously. Still he recognizes that he cannot win simply by appealing to the conservative base. His rhetoric in some key areas has to move leftward for his political survival.

On the fundamental issues of any presidential election -- the role of our government and direction of our foreign policy -- it is the political center that moved to the left. The candidates are merely reacting accordingly.

McCain's Long Strange Trip South of the Border

Bill Scher — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:34:23 -0400

The McCain campaign gets ... stranger.

The American economy has been battered on multiple fronts, including the loss of 3.4 million manufacturing jobs. The current trade strategy has not only contributed to the offshoring of jobs, but helped harm the lives of workers abroad. NAFTA in particular has disrupted the agricultural economy in Mexico, displacing peasant labor and driving illegal immigration. Even the pro-NAFTA Heritage Foundation concedes that stark inequality still plagues Mexico.

In turn, public anger with trade agreements written by and for multinationals, protecting the interests of corporations but not workers, is on the rise.

And McCain decides to campaign ... across the border, where the jobs are being sent.

And he releases a new ad, standing by the delusion that the current strategy is creating good jobs for everyone.

MCCAIN: To fuel our economy, we must create more jobs for Americans and for our neighbors to the south. With better jobs, more of them will be able to stay in their country.

We can't go back on our word on free trade promises with Mexico, Canada, Central America or anyone else. We must encourage more trade agreements to create more jobs on both sides of the border. That's why I'm behind the Colombian Free Trade Agreement.

These were the same arguments made 15 years ago to get NAFTA passed. And yes, for our own economy's sake, we must support our neighbors so they will have healthy economies too.

But NAFTA didn't work. Period.

To not even acknowledge that, when it's quite clear to American workers hurting from the impact, is simply strange

To haul out the same musty arguments, and ignore the lessons from what has failed in the past, is only evidence of being out-of-touch with what's going in America and the world today.

This is not a question of trade vs. no trade. There will always be trade.

This is not a question of free trade vs. protectionism. There is no such thing as free trade. Trade agreements like NAFTA are chock full of trade rules, just rules slanting the economic playing field towards multinational corporations.

This is a question about what makes a smart global economic strategy -- with fair trade rules, strong labor and environment standards and forward-thinking public investment -- so workers in America and across the globe will thrive in a changing world.

The Pumafinks

Rick Perlstein — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:56:31 -0400

This blog does not endorse candidates nor back a political party; should, say, John Sidney McCain or any other Republican come to their senses and reject their devotion to the conservatism that has been destroying America's democratic birthright lo these past several decades, and come to Jesus and accept progressive values, we will welcome them with open arms. We have not been shy, however, in arguing that tactically speaking the party of conservatism is more the heir to Watergate than it is to Goldwater: revisit posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I say this as preface to reminding us all that Watergate-style dirty tricks have been by now baked into the cake of conservative politicking (as Pat Buchanan continues to boast, and as Thomas Frank's stunning next book, which I've been reading, will irrefutably demonstrate). I say this as a preface to a demonstration about how it might be happening in the hear and now, the better so we can ward it off.

As I've demonstrated in Nixonland, key to Richard Nixon's smashing reelection success in 1972, and indeed his entire political career at least since the Hiss case in 1948, was to connive to get Democrats directing their vituperation at each other. Key to this were the operations that Nixonites referred to as "ratfucking," which I describe beginning with a discussion of the decline and fall of the candidate Nixon most feared to run against in 1972, Maine senator Edmund Muskie:

A stink bomb went off in one of his offices; a mysterious press release went out in Florida that the Muskie campaign was illegally using government-owned typewriters. Ten black picketers paced back and forth on the sidewalk in front of his hotel in Tampa calling him a racist for comment, back in September, that a Democratic ticket with a black running mate would have a hard time getting elected. An ad appeared in the February 8 issue of a Miami Beach Jewish newspaper: "Muskie, Why Won't You Consider a Few as a Vice President?" (Muskie hadn't said a word on the subject.) Flyers referring to Muskie's Polish heritage began appearing in Jewish neighborhoods: "Remember the Warsaw Ghetto...Vote Right on March 15."...

All of the other viable Democratic candidates—save the one Richard Nixon wanted to run against, George McGovern—suffered similarly during the primaries:

one morning Scoop Jackson's supporters opened their Tampa headquarters and found it plastered floor to ceiling with Muskie stickers A thousand cards circulated through a Wallace rally reading, "If you like Hitler, you'll love Wallace.") (The other side read, "A vote for Wallace is a wasted vote, on March 14 cast your vote for Edmund Muskie.") A press release on Muskie campaign stationery said Hubert Humphrey was anti-Israel.... On "Citizens for Muskie" letterhead, the Nixon operatives sent out letters addressed to "Dear Fellow Democrats (the same salutation Nixon's campaign used in 1962 when it apprised potential voters that [Democrat] Pat Brown was under the thumb of a left-wing organization that had adopted the "entire platform of the Communist Party"). The Florida letter read, "We on Senator Ed Muskie's staff sincerely hope you have decided upon Senator Muskie as your choice... However, if you have not made your decision, you should be aware of several facts." These included that Henry Jackson had sired an illegitimate daughter in high school and had twice been arrested for homosexual activity in Washington, D.C., and that Hubert Humphrey had been arrested for drunk driving in the company of a "known call girl" generously provided him by a lumber lobbyist.

Another letter on McCarthy stationery asked his supporters to ignore his name on the ballot and cast their votes for Humphrey. Actual rats scuttled through a Muskie press conference; ribbons tied to their tails read, 'Muskie is a rat fink." On television poles...elves posted giant signs, attributed to a "Mothers Backing Muskie Committee," reading HELP MUSKIE SUPPORT BUSING MORE CHILDREN NOW.... Democratic millionaires got a letter on Muskie stationery asking them not to donate: Muskie wanted small donors, not "the usual fat cats."

All this dreck issued—you guessed it—from the White House and Nixon's reelection campaign headquarters. Such "false flag" operations were an anchor of their campaign strategy: as Buchanan put it in a 1971 memo, to "focus on those issues that divide the Democrats, not those that unite Republicans," as their "guiding political principle." The point was to make it impossible for the Democrats to unite together at their convention in Miami Beach, and henceforth during the autumn campaign. It worked. At the end of 1971 pundits were predicting Democratic victory, whichever of their strongest candidates ended up with the nod. Then, soon enough, as I write, "In the watering holes where rival campaign staffers met to unwind, to gently chide each other, strike up flirtations, exchange war stories, imbibe with reporters—a veil of hostility descended between camps."

Different watering holes now, but same story.

No, it's not that some of the Hillary die-hardism isn't utterly organic, the product of sincere dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. But that was Buchanan's point in 1971: None of this stuff works unless you build it off divisions that already exist in Democratic circles. You exacerbate them. You light the fuse. You make it easy for good Democrats to rationalize that they're doing the right thing, as Hubert Humphrey rationalized to the president on election night in this private conversation that he was doing the right thing when he implied he helped sabotage George McGovern for the general election.

You find the loose thread in the coalition. Then you pull, pull, pull on it until it unravels. Think of this next time you hear about PUMA PAC, the "grassroots" organization still fighting for Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination over Barack Obama, but was chartered by a Republican.

Why The Right Isn't Future-Ready

Sara Robinson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:29:33 -0400

Over the course of my master's program, I've had some tortured conversations with my dean over the direction my research is taking. He's been poking at me (and, being an atheist who was raised by Jesuits, he's one of those gentle souls who knows how to poke sharp and hard, with a positively angelic smile that only barely conceals his demonic glee) about what on earth the study of authoritarian religious and political movements has to do with the future.

And sometimes, overwhelmed by the size of the argument and not always clear on where to start, all I can say is: Everything. Where we fall on the authoritarian spectrum has every damned thing in the world to do with how well we identify looming issues, which options we're willing to consider, how far we can adapt, and whether or not we're likely to succeed. Authoritarianism is dangerous not just because it's hostile to individual liberty, but also because it poisons every step of the process of social change. And societies that succumb to it are, in a very real sense, setting themselves up for failure.

In this essay, I'm going look at a few reasons why this is so.

Ignoble Savages

Conservatism begins with the foundational assumption that humans are inherently evil, selfish, greedy and lustful, and that the vast majority of us are not remotely capable of any kind of reliable self-discipline. Of course, this is a personal projection so big you'd need an IMAX theater to capture the full sweep of it all: Conservatives believe this because they know how they like to act when nobody's around to hold them accountable — and they expect others to be no different, and certainly no better.

This is why the GOP's recent pervert parade hardly fazes them, and also why they accept their own side's contrite confessions so quickly. They're quite sure all humans are natural hypocrites and liars. Furthermore, because the flesh is so weak and our reason so fallible, they believe that, ignoble savages that we are, we really don't have any business trying to control what happens next. This rejection of human agency can go one of two ways.

One school of thought holds that Someone In Charge has already decided what our future will be, and we have no right and no power to interfere with those plans. God has pre-ordained it. The President knows what he's doing. The CEO has the whole thing thought through. Daddy knows best.

The other version says that we're plenty capable of taking charge and shaping the future to suit ourselves — but, given our basic vileness and stupidity, we're almost certain to screw it up and make a far bigger hash of the situation than it already is.

The first view says we can't control the future. The second view says we can — but it's always wrong to try.

If you're coming from either of these assumptions, authoritarianism's ripe appeal becomes obvious. The only rational way to deal with humanity's essential perfidy is to put people firmly under the control of strong external authority, safely surrounded by hard-and-fast rules that are swiftly enforced with draconian punishments. As long as everyone understands and accepts that falling in behind Our Leaders and following their rules is the only way to secure a stable society and a predictable future for the whole group, peace and good order will be assured. If you're a political authoritarian, you fall in behind the President. If you're religious, it's God and the leaders of your church. If you're an economic conservative, you obey the dictates of the market, and the CEOs who lead it. (And if you're any one of these, liberals are dangerous apostates, who by their very questioning and refusal to obey are a threat to that good order the leaders are trying to achieve.)

This is why right-wing authoritarian followers (RWAs) unquestioningly surrender their will to their leaders. They hope and expect that that leader will decide for them what their future will be. It's a job they're all too happy to give up, because they're roundly convinced they can't or shouldn't do it for themselves.

Unfortunately, when it comes to exercising good foresight, formulating options and making the right choices — especially under stressful conditions when we need to implement big changes fast, like global warming — authoritarians can be counted on make the wrong decisions with astonishing regularity.

The Real Enemy Is Change

The biggest problem with rigid authoritarian systems is that they inevitably come to view change itself as a mortal enemy — the prime antagonist that threatens the order and stability of the highly-structured system the followers have entrusted their futures to. And, unfortunately, when you start looking at change as your existential foe, you put serious limits around your ability to envision, prepare for, and adapt to it.

Change comes in two forms. First, there's endogenous change — the kind we create for ourselves through the decisions and plans we make. In times and places where a negative view of human agency has taken root (the Middle Ages would be Exhibit A; the last few hundred years of Chinese history might be Exhibit B; and, more generally, agrarian societies in all times and places have been drawn to this view), planning beyond the next year or three simply doesn't happen much. Strict and punitive societies actively discourage innovation and invention. Authoritarians tend to shun people who dare to dream up original ideas and new ways of solving problems as a threat to the established order. Questioning the leaders' decisions is a good way to get yourself tossed off the ramparts forthwith. You don't need to lose too many creative thinkers this way before general curiosity about the rest of the world vanishes. Needless to say, strangers — potential bringers of change — also become feared as a source of danger.

Over time, progress slows to a crawl, which creates dangers of its own. Through lack of exercise, authoritarian societies become stiff and inflexible, gradually losing the personal and cultural resilience required to survive and adapt to anything but the smallest changes. Increasingly, people become convinced that the only possible future is the one that looks exactly like the past. They get complacent. In a few generations, they may forget how to cope with change entirely.

Because of this, they're more likely to miss — or see, but simply not know how to seize — opportunities that rise up in their path. Worse: They are far more likely to be completely swept away on the inevitable day that the second kind of change arrives.

That would be exogenous change — the kind that the world inflicts on us, whether we're ready for it or not. No matter how strong and safe your leaders make you feel, or how well you follow the rules they've set down, acts of God will happen. The barbarians will arrive at the gates. Locusts, plagues and floods will sweep through town. Someone will fly airplanes into your iconic buildings.

In that moment, the world ends. There is no plan. There's no capacity to weigh options or take individual action. Standing there flat-footed, waiting for a signal or an order from on high that often comes tragically too late, people in authoritarian cultures often find themselves totally swept away in these kinds of events. When the external boundaries they depended on are breached, the loss of life and property can be horrific, because individuals don't know how to make good decisions on their own authority.

But even worse, for those who survive, is the loss of all the cultural and social touchstones that organized their reality into coherence, and enabled them to make sense and meaning out of their lives. Those who've been through it will tell you that the existential crisis that follows is like nothing so much as being dead alive.

Trouble With The Vision Thing

Another problem is that RWAs are prone to choose the worst possible leaders: specifically, amoral and manipulative high-social-dominance (high-SDO) men who can always be counted on to put their own personal interests ahead of the good of the whole. These are the guys who are putting the phrase "disaster capitalism" into the lexicon: in their worldview, millions may die — but hey, as long as I'm getting rich, it's all good.

High-SDO leaders throughout history have notoriously built only three things: 1) armies (to take other people's stuff); 2) walls (to protect their own stuff); and 3) monuments to their own glory. This, in itself, is a testament to the limits of their vision: most of them literally couldn't imagine a way to invest the money that didn't involve putting the spotlight on themselves. In a time of major change, when a nation needs to make large-scale investments in its own commons to ensure its future success, the last thing you need is someone in charge who can't see past his own bling.

Historically, authoritarian regimes entrusted with the job of setting the future agenda have usually started out with a uniquely brash utopian boldness (examples include the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, and our own religious right). Their energy is high, and they've got a very specific plan in mind. But over time, as they settle into power, their thinking becomes narrow and stunted. Groupthink sets in, yes-men abound, and xenophobia keeps new people and new ideas from circulating. Starved of information inputs, and confronted by no one willing to challenge their thinking, these leaders eventually just run out of ideas — and their regimes succumb to inertia.

When that happens, thinking about the future simply stops. People who think this way end up hunkered down so tightly behind their ideological walls that they don't even dare peek their heads over to look at the far horizon. They don't need to: They're not interested in any reality that exists outside the confines of their familiar world — and will often deny such alternate realities even exist. Besides, if they look, what will they see? There may be hordes coming. There may be plague and pestilence and Paris Hilton. If that's the case, they count on their trusted authorities to protect them — as long they don't make the fatal mistake of venturing beyond the confines of the castle yard.

When you draw that much emotional comfort from the secure assumption that the future will continue to be exactly like the past, there's zero incentive to spend your time dreaming up and preparing for possible alternative futures, either good or bad.

We Will Always Be At War With Oceania

Authoritarians also tend to be ideologues — and that toxic combo makes it virtually impossible for them to envision any alternative future besides the one that fulfills the eschatology of the ideology they've chosen. There will always be oil. There will always be glaciers. Jesus is coming Real Soon Now. And we will always be at war with Oceania. Ideologies are boxes; and once you're stuck in one, no other reality is possible.

People who think this way often regard any suggestion that things might play out in other ways as a deep existential threat. What we consider a reasonable evaluation of plausible alternative scenarios, they view as a terrifying line of inquiry that calls into question all their basic assumptions about how reality is organized. There is one past, one present, one future (or, perhaps more aptly — one people, one Reich, one Fuhrer). To suggest something else might happen — something not in the script the leaders handed them — is to suggest that their leaders might be wrong. Since faith in their leaders is their primary source of meaning and safety, this is a prospect that shakes their world to its very core.

Stealing The Future

Futurists are big believers that people have the right, the power, and the duty to determine their own futures. Most of us would agree that democratic government is the best system ever devised to ensure that people have that right, and the entire Bill of Rights is designed to ensure that we as individuals are free to pursue the future of our choice.

Authoritarians, on the other hand, are the sworn enemies of that right. Their high-social dominance leaders lay claim to other people's futures, and colonize them for their own enrichment and other personal purposes. The religious ones are determined to bring about the Second Coming, or the return of the hidden Imam or the reign of the Messiah. The economic ones (as Naomi Wolf suggests) want to disrupt so many lives and create so much chaos that they'll be able to take control of vast stretches of the globe — and profit handsomely from the aftermath. The political ones want to seize our democratically-controlled futures, and put them back in the hands of a king.

And that's why I consider the study of authoritarian movements critical to understanding the future. Anybody who is willing to manipulate others for profit, to dehumanize them and use them as objects of their own gratification, is literally making a business out of stealing other people's futures — the very stuff of their lives.

Dealing With the Resistance

According to Dr. Robert Altemeyer and other social psychologists who study authoritarian behavior, roughly a quarter of Americans organize their lives around authoritarian thought patterns. That's a lot of potential resistance to change. But at this moment in history — when we are faced with the epic task of renewing America and re-structuring the very economic and technological foundations of our civilization, both of which will require rapid, large-scale change efforts — we need to take those people's deep suspicion of democratic process and knee-jerk resistance to change into serious account. If we're not factoring their inevitable fear and fury into our strategic plans, we will very likely doom ourselves to failure. If these people get frightened enough, they can make the changes we seek impossible.

This isn't just idle conjecture. The far right has already made it frighteningly clear that they intend to meet an Obama win in November with a storm of domestic terrorism. (It's not a coincidence that the last wave of extreme right-wing violence peaked in 1993, the year after Bill Clinton was elected.) We shouldn't underestimate just what a politically dangerous act it will be for us to overthrow a right-wing regime that they accepted as legitimate authority, and replace it with a more liberal one headed by a black man (no less!). Leaders on the far right are already using language that's designed to prime their followers for violence when the time comes. Let's not be surprised when it comes to pass.

And all this is just the response to a single election that doesn't go their way.

All political movements are, at heart, collaborative efforts between people working together to manifest their shared vision of a desirable future. On the left, we're looking ahead to reaffirming the Constitution, re-establishing a solid middle class, healing the planet, and restoring America as a force for good in the world. On the right, they're looking behind, seeking to hold onto a passing future with everything they have, even if they have to shred the Constitution, wreck the middle class, conquer the planet, and make America the enemy of the world to do it.

Understanding the role authoritarian thought patterns play in cementing people's resistance to necessary change is absolutely critical to meeting and managing the backlash. Those of us who've been watching our right-wing authoritarians through their years in power won't be out of a job after January 20. Quite to the contrary, in fact: After their leaders are put out of power, they'll become a different and perhaps more overtly dangerous kind of threat to the future we have in mind. Off to the sidelines and out of view, they will bear even more watching. If anything, that's when the real job will begin.

Decline and Fall of America's Energy Empire

Sara Robinson — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:21:49 -0400

The current debate over offshore oil leases has put America's gargantuan energy appetite back on the discussion table this week. I've tried to stay out of it so far for two reasons.

The first is that (here comes the full disclosure) I married into a family that's been making its modest fortune in the oil patches of the American West for over a century, so there's some personal interest at stake here. (The upside: I've got a box seat from which to report on at least some of the festivities.) The second is that as a futurist — trained in America's oil center, Houston, no less — I take a much longer and systemic view of the situation. And that view gives my thinking about our energy future a rather different shape and direction.

For the bigger context on what's happening, we need to think in centuries, not just decades. There's a lot to this view — this article admittedly oversimplifies a lot, and bypasses a few important issues entirely — but that just means there's plenty more to discuss in future posts. For now, some basics.

Energy and Empire

The bottom line is this: All empires are built on vast amounts of energy. And no great empire in history has ever come to power without controlling and dominating the market in whatever the current preferred energy resource was at the time.

University of Toronto futurist Thomas Homer-Dixon lays out the argument in The Upside of Down, which I recommend to anyone seeking to understand the cause-and-effect relationship between energy and economic and political power. He carefully builds the argument that Rome rose on its ability to harness vast amounts of Mediterranean sunshine, turn it into food, and then reliably move that food around the empire to feed vast numbers of soldiers, builders, and horses and thus consolidate its regime. When that system failed, the empire crumbled.

Likewise, the Dutch built their short-lived empire on the ability to supply oil for Europe's lanterns. They were supplanted by England, which was able to supply better, cheaper fuel out of its vast coal resources. British dominance lasted until a rising America turned out to have unimaginable amounts of coal, which allowed it to undercut the British pound as the world's most stable currency — and outperform the UK economically.

And then came oil, which was soon preferred to coal because it proved to be a far more efficient (hence, cleaner and cheaper) and versatile fuel. You could get far more energy output from a smaller unit (coal's comparative inefficiency made it impractical for small vehicles like cars, for example) and with far less effort; and you could turn it into far more different kinds of products -- not just fuel, but plastics, fertilizers, wonder drugs, and much more.

As the world moved toward oil at the beginning of the last century, the UK — eager not to lose out again — made an early bid for the oil fields of Arabia. But North America counted among its original blessings more oil reserves than any other continent on the planet; and that, argues Homer-Dixon, was decisive. Unable to compete, the British Empire faded, and the American Century began.

But controlling the energy taps isn't the whole equation. To build the boon into a full-fledged empire, a country needs to create and export a whole infrastructure, a new and more productive way of life, based on the energy resources they control. The English built the first coal-fired railroads, ignited the Industrial Revolution with coal furnaces and steam power, and built a fleet of great ships that ran on coal oil. These, in turn, powered their global trading network and their military. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, Great Britain developed a complex and tightly interrelated technological, political, and economic system that established the pound as the global currency standard, and the Brits as lords of everything they touched.

In the 20th century, America repeated the feat. We built oil-fueled cars, power plants, farms and factories; and then exported that technology to client states all over the world. The American dollar, backed by control of both the world's oil and most of the technology that made it useful, became the global currency standard. Powered by oil, we became the richest nation in history — so permeated with the stuff that very few of us can even see the degree to which we're soaking in it, let alone really grasp the fact that almost all of the wealth we have originally flowed out of the ground as crude.

Regime Change Begins At Home

Homer-Dixon also points out another, more sober lesson. It's never happened that an empire that built its wealth on one energy resource also succeeded in dominating the next resource that supplanted it. Human nature being what it is, societies that are deeply invested in the current energy regime tend to fall into denial when that regime comes to its natural end — either because it simply runs out, or because it's superceded by something even more efficient and versatile. People can't believe things won't go on as they always have, or imagine that life could be any different. They shut their eyes to looming trouble, ignore the signs of impending doom, and refuse to make any reasonable plans to navigate the coming changes.

In the meantime, as old system falls apart, someone hungrier and more nimble finds a way to capitalize on a new, more efficient energy resource. And so old empires die, and new ones rise to take their places.

Put it in this perspective, and it becomes obvious that when we talk about running out of oil, we're not just talking about higher prices or low-carbon lifestyles or making an easy transition to something else that America (we like to think) will also dominate. When we fully grasp the foundational role oil played in securing America's wealth and global power, it becomes obvious that when we talk about moving off oil, we're really talking about nothing less than the demise of American power throughout the world, and the end of the American Way of Life as we've known it for generations.

That's serious stuff. But it's the truth that provides the backdrop for everything else that's going on right now. Against this larger process, it's easier to see that the dollar is weakening because our control over the whole oil economy that has supported its value for the past century is in serious trouble — and that we won't be out of financial danger until we can base on the dollar's value on something other than oil. Our political stature is tanking because the world doesn't need to kiss up to us anymore to keep the cars running and the lights on — and it won't rise again until we find something else of equally high value to offer. Our standard of living is falling because it always floated on a sea of oil — and that sea is drying up. Oil prices are high not because of market manipulations and oil company profit-taking (though plenty of oil economists are sure that's part of the story, too); they're high because the whole system is destabilizing, heading for a major tipping point.

There may be brief reprieves, rallies, and respites over the next few years; but over the long haul, we shouldn't assume that "normal" as we've known it will ever be coming back.

Even before 9/11, the Bush Administration has always had a sense of panicked desperation about it — a desperation we've usually attributed to conservative revolutionary zeal, religious fanaticism, or free-market fundamentalism. But it's also plausible to interpret some of this as the desperation of people who were tasked with protecting the American empire by keeping the oil taps open and under control at any cost — and who know, deep in their guts, that time is running out.

The Project for a New American Century's stated strategy for maintaining the American superpower in the face of a rising China was to invade and dominate the Middle East, and thus control China's access to oil for the next several decades. That was the intended long-term payoff of the Iraq War: control the oil, and thus control the world. In their minds, if we have to bankrupt the country, tear up the Constitution, and piss off every other country in the world along the way, it's worth it — since they know we're not worth a damn economically or politically without the oil anyway. Sure, the means are ugly; but according to their view of the ends, there's simply no alternative — and no other possible future worth discussing. They don't care if we hate them now, because they're convinced we'll thank them in 20 years for having the statesmanlike foresight to do what had to be done.

(Blame it on too much time in the oil patch. That toxic elixer of crude and money so easily goes to one's head....)

This perspective also provides some extra context for why locally-based power generation, like on-site or community wind and solar, are political non-starters for energy execs and their government minions. It's obvious that they hate it because they can't take profit from it; but they also know that America's global hegemony depends on keeping the world dependent on energy supplies they control. Since nobody can capture a monopoly on the wind or the sun, there's no way to build the next global empire on them. And therefore, renewables simply aren't very interesting to people whose first priority is geopolitical dominance and stratospheric profit.

The Long View

From this 10,000-foot view, it's easy to interpret the political spats and economic machinations and deal-making and climate debates and regional wars — the whole parade that dominates the news now — as simply opening acts in a long transition that could end up taking most of this century. Unless a) we discover vast new reserves on a globe that's been already explored from pole to pole (unlikely) and b) we come up with dramatic new evidence proving conclusively that climate change isn't a problem after all (even less likely), then the hard fact is: We will be spending the next several decades moving off oil.

It's going to be the most important work of this century. And Americans can either get out in front of this change and come out of it at the century's end with much of their greatness intact — or continue to fight it, and end up as another of history's has-beens.

Meeting this challenge means we're going to have to get very smart, very fast, about a lot of things.

• First, we need to accept that this change is happening, and start having serious conversations about how we're going to handle it. The Bush Administration's denial has already cost us eight valuable years. It's an understatement to say that the longer we avoid the issue, the worse the transition will be.

• Second, we need to stay mindful of the horrific pitfalls. The unimaginable grimness of the worst-case scenarios alone should be enough motivation to get and keep us talking.

Even the most-likely-case scenarios are disturbingly short on sunshine and roses. Historically, energy transitions (involving, as they do, the collapse of vast economic and political systems) have never happened smoothly. Rome fell so hard that it took a thousand years for anything like it to rise again. The stable world order held together by the British coal empire shattered apart in two vast world wars and another dozen colonial revolutions (some of which still aren't resolved decades later). It's not unreasonable to expect similar disruptions as the American oil empire begins to unravel. It's not going to be pretty.

When complex economic systems fail, they almost always fail catastrophically, leaving vast numbers of displaced, disoriented and righteously angry people in their wake. Bad economic and environmental decisions get made. Critical issues are ignored, or abandoned due to lack of resources. If folks get desperate enough for security, it's entirely likely that they'll reorganize into feudal kingdoms or even warlord-run clans, as has already happened in too many Middle Eastern countries in the wake of war. Restoring these lost democracies can take generations. Much of that risk can be averted — but only if we're aware of the potential for trouble, and start figuring out how to deal with it now.

• Third, an important part of that planning will involve taking stock of the carbon-based resources remaining to us, and figure out how to best invest them to smooth the way to the next era. We can use that remaining margin of oil to rebuild walkable cities, construct next-generation energy infrastructure, and install electric transit. We can leverage it to repave the world with agrichar, restoring millions of acres of arable land, creating a vast new carbon sink, and eliminating the need for petroleum-based fertilizers in the bargain. We will still be able to afford to run oil-fueled bulldozers and trucks and ships for a while yet. Let's use them wisely while we can.

• Fourth, "globalization" may take on a whole new meaning, one that's more about global governance than global trade. Executing transition plans necessarily means empowering planet-wide organizations that have the ability to make and enforce the rules. We've already done this on a limited scale in the CFC treaties, international non-proliferation efforts, and so on. But navigating a transition of this magnitude is going to force us to take the whole idea of global government to the next level. (Can't you hear the far right howling about this already?)

Creating these new powers will raise all kinds of hard questions about national sovereignty and the rights of the global collective. In the end, we may revisit the meaning and purpose of government, and perhaps create entirely new forms of government that better balance local needs against global goals.

What's Next?

Over the next decade, some of the most heated political battles of all will be pitched over questions like: Who wins the next round? What new energy regime will rise in place of oil? What countries will take the lead? What price will they exact? What corporations will profit? How do we make sure that the new energy order is more sustainable, just, and humane than the one that's soon to be past?

We can discuss possible answers to those questions in other posts. (This one's already long enough.) In general, I'm keeping an open mind. James Kunstler says that we're looking at the inevitable End Of The World As We Know it — but I see that as an absolute worst-case scenario, and far from the most likely one. The people who say we'll invent our way out of it have a somewhat better claim. We're well aware by now that all technologies come with a cost; but there are also a great many promising ideas already floating around out there, and we've barely started looking. Who knows what we'll find when we get serious about the search?

But the evidence is now overwhelmingly supporting the idea that the Age of Oil — and an American empire built on oil — is coming to an end, and there is no turning back. The small debates we're having today are the opening strains of a change process that most of us probably won't live to see the end of; but the choices we make now will have long-term reverberations down the century as that process unfolds.

And the conservatives who continue to distract us from that reality and commit atrocities in the name of maintaining an unsustainable status quo and "securing our future" are, in fact, setting us up for a decline of historic proportions. The future they want for us is no longer possible — or even desirable. When the century is over, we may not be an empire anymore -- but do have the choice to become a different kind of force for good in the world. The sooner we recognize that the 20th Century is over and that the 21st Century will demand different things of us, the sooner we can get on with remaking ourselves to fit the new era ahead.

Ignore The Failed Former Oilman In Front of the White House

Bill Scher — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:12:24 -0400

President George Bush.

The former oilman who had to know that higher oil prices were inevitable yet did nothing in eight years to increase the supply of clean energy alternatives and expand energy-efficiency.

The man who said in every single State of the Union address that we needed to reduce oil consumption then did nothing about it.

That man had the shameless gall to say today that "in the long run, the solution is to reduce demand for oil by promoting alternative energy technologies," to strengthen our environment and national security, but "in the short run, the American economy will continue to rely largely on oil, and that means we need to increase supply especially here at home."

As if he became president yesterday. As if we were born yesterday.

He did not, and we did not. That man has zero credibility on the energy policy. He offered nothing for eight years and he literally offers nothing today.

He repeated the estimates of available oil -- 10 billion barrels in ANWR, 18 billion off our coastlines -- which I cited yesterday.

He pretends they are significant, but that oil amounts to so little additional supply, it would result in less than $0.06 a gallon of savings, 17 years from now.

There's nothing "short run" about it. And that's after gas prices have skyrocketed $3.00 a gallon, breaking $4.00 across the country, during the course of his miserable presidency.

He has nothing to offer, and should be ignored. I'm sorry to have wasted your time and mine even writing this post.

Debating Grover Norquist, America's Leading Fake Populist

David Sirota — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:25:15 -0400

SEATTLE - This week on my national book tour, I had the opportunity to debate conservative leader Grover Norquist on KUOW - Seattle's NPR affiliate. The topic of the debate was my new book, THE UPRISING, and specifically the rise of populism in American politics. You can listen to the debate here - it begins about half way into the interview.

Norquist, one of the architects of the original conservative uprising of the 1980s and 1990s, is a good indicator of where the conservative movement is today. As you can hear, the Right is angry with the Bush administration for not being more conservative on a whole host of issues - and you can sense from Norquist how ideologically bankrupt conservatives really are today.

For a generation or so, the Right has dynamically adapted its reactionary ideas to sound like a populist, anti-Establishment, for-the-little-guy agenda. But thanks to all the crises we now face from those ideas - an energy crisis, stagnant wages, national security catastrophes, a global warming emergency - it has become much easier for progressives to unmask the Right as what I called Norquist: Fake populists.

The concept of fake populism is an important one as we move into the superheated general election campaign.

Just as Norquist tries in the debate to package environmental degradation, oil industry handouts and tax cuts for billionaires as policies designed to help us regular folks, so will John McCain try to present more NAFTA-style trade deals and more war in Iraq as populism. And the more we label it for what it is - fake populism - the more we will show the country the difference between a true majority agenda and the Beltway elitism of the Right.

What struck me most about the debate with Norquist is how truly out of touch with ordinary people he really is.

This is a person who in the face of $4.50 gasoline and $40 billion in ExxonMobil profits tells us that we should give away more policy goodies to the oil companies. This is a person who in the face of polls showing the public thinks the tax system is fundamentally unfair in the wake of the Bush tax cuts, says we should nonetheless push forward with even more regressive tax cuts. This is a person who in the face of massive budget deficits and social service cuts, says we should slash corporate tax rates, even though our effective corporate tax rate is among the lowest in the industrialized world. This is, in short, a person who is so insulated inside the Beltway and so coddled by the Big Money interests that have financed his career that he quite literally has no idea that there's an uprising going on throughout the country - and no official photos of him with statues of Ronald Reagan can hide that reality. He seems genuinely unaware of the trends on both the Right and Left that I report on in my book.

Of course, I praise Norquist at the beginning of the debate for his tactical brilliance in building a movement (and he is featured in my book because of this). The pressure he has put on Republicans from the Right has been remarkably effective - and progressives could learn a thing or two about the value of a more confrontational attitude towards Democrats on our own issues for our own uprising. That said, I think this debate shows that the conservative movement is indeed buckling under the bankruptcy of its ideas. And as we continue building our uprising and exposing their fake populism, we are getting closer to the truly exponential change that has marked other uprising moments in American history.

Listen to the full debate here, and then go pick up THE UPRISING at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore. Also, make sure to check the book tour schedule at www.davidsirota.com/uprising - I hope to see you on the trail!

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

Not So Stories: "2nd Highest" Corporate Tax Rate

Bill Scher — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:51:38 -0400

In the latest Bloggingheads.tv installment of "The Week In Blog" with The Heritage Foundation's Conn Carroll and myself, Conn offered a talking point I've been hearing a lot from conservatives lately: that America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. Watch it below.

You'll likely hear this a lot more because Sen. John McCain uses the line as justification for his proposal to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.

There's just one problem. That America has the second highest corporate tax rate is, as Rick would say, "not so."

Jason Furman of the Brookings Institution (and as Robert Borosage commented on last week, now Sen. Barack Obama's economy policy director) explained in a Washington Post op-ed last year (emphasis added):

The United States has the second highest corporate tax rate of the 30 countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). But because the United States has so many generous special tax preferences for businesses, it collects the fourth lowest corporate tax revenues as a share of GDP among all OECD countries.

Conn went on to argue that "Obama's new economic adviser," referring to Furman, "agrees with me that the U.S. corporate tax rate needs to be lower ... like John McCain wants to."

In fact, Furman's position is not at all in line with McCain or other economic conservatives.

Furman's op-ed went on to praise the tax reform package of Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY. That bill, virulently opposed by conservatives, would lower the corporate tax rate but to 30.5%, less than what McCain wants. More importantly, it would fully make up the lost revenue. Furman writes:

Without adding to the deficit burden, this rate reduction would be fully paid for by a series of measures to broaden the corporate tax base to ensure that different forms of investments are taxed at similar rates.

This is why no conservatives supported Rangel's proposal. It wasn't another corporate giveaway. Merely an attempt to make the tax code more fair without losing critical revenue.

So the next time you hear some of these factually flimsy conservative talking points, remember: America has the fourth-lowest effective tax rate. And no one on Obama's economic team embraces McCain's tax proposals.

UPDATE: Also of note is this Smart Money article (via Democratic Underground's annabanna), which highlights how corporations avoid paying their American taxes:

You may have heard: U.S. corporations face one of the highest income tax rates in the world, though the mention of "rate" is often enough excised, so that what comes through is the assertion that corporations pay too much in taxes. This is simply untrue if your basis for comparison is the developed world. The truth is that while the 35% corporate income tax rate is high indeed, the creativity and global reach of U.S. corporations make them among the most lightly levied.

Between 2000 and 2005, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 2.2% of the GDP. The average for the 30 mostly rich member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was 3.4%.

Why the disparity given the high federal rate, which rises to 39% counting state taxes? Part of the answer is that big U.S. companies have become expert at hiding profits in tax havens overseas. And many of the smaller ones simply pass through their income to owners who then report it on their personal returns.

UPDATE 2: Conn responds here.